


the weight of tomorrow

by Mariyekos



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: ...to an extent, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Bad Ending, Gen, Mentioned Scions of the Seventh Dawn (Final Fantasy XIV), Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal Spoilers, Ryne and other characters have brief sections not warranting character tags, Time Loop, Time Travel, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-28 17:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30143226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mariyekos/pseuds/Mariyekos
Summary: Everyone was counting on him. The dying people of the First who had looked to him for guidance, his long-gone friends of the Source post-Eighth Umbral Calamity who had sacrificed themselves to see him go back in time, his beloved friends of the Seventh who'd entrusted their hopes and dreams and lifelong work unto him praying for a future that they would not live to see. There were so many expectations on his back. And try as he might, the Crystal Exarch could not live up to any of them.Time and time again he tried to summon the Warrior of Light to the First in order to bring salvation. Time and time again his plans were thwarted, whether by the Warrior failing to answer his summons at all or tragedy befalling them before he could bring his plans to fruition, leaving the Crystal Exarch with no options other than to live out the same repeating century on the First, praying his next attempts would succeed before the crystal price fully claimed his body and mind.
Relationships: Lyna & G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by an [amazing artwork](https://twitter.com/zerosshadows/status/1372459976954904576) by @/zerosshadows on twitter, talking about a situation in which the Crystal Exarch kept trying to summon the WoL only to fail and crystalize further. I thought it was an interesting concept, and time travel has been my favorite trope/prompt for like the last decade, so I decided to run with it! Hope you enjoy.

How had it gone so wrong, the Exarch asked himself, staring at the dissolving corpse in front of him, the sobbing girl at its side, and the queasy elezen casting a useless healing spell over its half-gone chest.

How had things come to this? He’d been so sure he could do it. Everyone had trusted in him. And yet, he’d failed. He’d failed, and not only would the whole shard and the Source beyond pay the price, but he’d inflicted such terrible suffering on those who could have at least lived good lives before the end came. He’d only succeeded in making things worse, not better. How could he have been so foolish; so wrong?

“Thancred please, wake up!” the girl Minfilia choked out, hands shaking as she clung to a half empty glove. The hand within had started to go, glistening particles floating off into the air. Tears had soaked into Minfilia's dress and Thancred's coat alike, inhumanly blue eyes reddened and cheeks wet. The sobs that wracked her body were not a pretty sight. The hoarseness of her voice from the screams she had let out begging for someone, anyone to come help her after she’d dragged Thancred’s soulless...body wasn’t a proper word, really. Mostly-dead husk to the Crystarium’s entrance, not knowing what to do, did her no favors either. 

The Exarch had noticed the gradual fading of Thancred’s soul and already-faint aether over the five and a half years he’d spent in the First. So had Urianger in the two years since he’d been called. But he’d largely ignored thinking about what the final consequences of said fade would be, hoping and praying and believing with all his heart that he would be able to call the Warrior of Light and Darkness, sacrifice himself, and right it all before the disconnect between Thancred’s soul and body consumed him.

He had been wrong.

He had been wrong and Thancred was dead. Irreversibly dead. It was a cruel miracle that the husk of his soul-body had not completely dissolved when he’d collapsed the final time, allowing just enough room for Minfilia to drag him back to the Crystarium where the guards immediately alerted the Exarch to the scene only to find there was nothing he could do.

They were still right in front of Tesselation, actually. Lyna had taken the guards and made a large perimeter around where Thancred and Minfilia collapsed, their bodies forming a wall to keep the public from seeing as much as they could prevent. Only Urianger had been let through, called back from Il Mheg by Lyna as soon as the Exarch gave an order to make the wall.

Urianger’s presence did little more than the Exarch’s. Not  _ nothing _ more. Minfilia knew him somewhat due to Urianger’s friendship with Thancred, something the now-dead man had never formed with the Exarch. He had to have at least somewhat of a calming effect. Her sobs had grown slightly further apart when Urianger had started casting benefices he must’ve known were useless over the motionless Thancred. She’d looked up to Urianger a few times in between screams for Thancred to wake where she had not once set eyes upon the Exarch, even when he first kneeled at Thancred’s side to cast cure spells of his own.

But Minfilia was heartbroken. More than that. And there was nothing anyone could do.

Not when Thancred first collapsed. Not when half a bell had passed and he began to dissolve.

Not when another twenty minutes went by and he was gone entirely, Minfilia sobbing over a pile of clothes and gunblade. Naught more.

“Why?” she sobbed, barely even breathing at that point. The Exarch began to worry she might suffocate herself if she didn’t calm down. “Why did this happen?! Why him? What did he do to deserve this? He was only ever nice to me, he only ever tried to save me, he...he…”

Urianger shoved the clothes and gunblade aside, taking Minfilia into his arms and hugging her tight. The difference in their statures meant the girl was entirely hidden from the Exarch’s view, Miniflia pressed into Urianger’s chest in a grip so tight the Exarch could see his muscles flex exposed as they were with his sleeveless robe. Her sobs were muffled as well. 

It took another bell before she stopped crying. None moved from their spots in the interm.

“I shall take her to Il Mheg,” Urianger finally declared, picking Minfilia up in his arms. She was despondent, crystal-like eyes even more glassy than they usually were. Urianger’s, on the other hand, were narrowed and full of an invisible but clear fire. He was seething. Never before had the Exarch seen the man so upset. “Some time spent with the pixies may help rejuvenate her spirit, crushed as I know it to be. I ask that thou dost not make an attempt to follow us. She must needs recover. Away from…” 

Urianger inhaled sharply, closing his eyes. Pained.

“Away from the one who caused this?” the Exarch offered back, brows drawn together hidden beneath his hood, lips quivering for the man before him to see.

“She hast not the knowledge of thine involvement.”

“She’s a smart girl. She’ll figure it out.”

“As thou must perfect thy spell to draw forth our beloved Warrior. Let not Thancred’s sacrifice be in vain.”

The Exarch’s admittedly pathetic smile cracked. “I won’t,” he breathed back, tears in his eyes.

He didn’t believe his words. Not in the slightest, as much as he wanted to.

But as Urianger carried Minfilia to the Amaro Launch the Exarch headed straight for the Ocular, speaking to and looking at no one as he made his way to his destination.

“My lord,” Lyna began, jogging to catch up with him. “Are you all right?”

“No one is to enter the Ocular or the Tower as a whole until I leave it, do you understand?”

Lyna frowned. “What are you planning to do?”

“You needn’t worry yourself over me. Just do as I ask and all will be well.”

The frown deepened. “I do not know if I can bring myself to believe that after what we just witnessed. Not when you refuse to look me in the eye. My lord, please,” she urged.

The Exarch stopped abruptly. Had Lyna not been a dancer, so graceful and quick on her feet, she’d likely have barrelled into him.

He stood there a moment, unmoving. Then he turned around, tilting his head up so he could see her face even if the enchantment on his hood meant she could not see most of his.

“Lyna, trust me. I will be fine.”

She did not believe him. Not in the slightest. But she gave the Crystarium salute and let him on his way, and she was there outside the doors when he stumbled out three days later with nothing to show but a new patch of crystal that had advanced from his right elbow to the middle of his forearm.

No Warrior of Light or Darkness to help him. Not even a wayward Scion. Just crystal.

When he’d first woken from his long sleep, he’d found crystal covering his right shoulder and part of his chest, brushing the edge of his neck but not going much farther. After traveling back in time and across the Rift, it had gone down to his elbow and across his sternum. The energy to summon Thancred fed it enough to reach his collarbone, Urianger saw it reaching his neck.

Though her eyes widened in concern at the crystal that now dipped below his sleeve, Lyna did not comment on it. Nor on the crystal that went higher on his neck, nearing his chin.

He appreciated it.

But things grew strained between them, as they grew strained between him and Urianger. They still spoke occasionally, Urianger working with Minfilia to see if there was a way to drain the light from the Lightwardens without them transferring their power to a new vessel while the Exarch claimed to be looking for new ways to summon the Warrior.

Not that the Exarch’s claims were true. Not after the first few weeks, at least. While Urianger and Minfilia were making some progress, it wasn’t nearly fast enough. The Exarch could feel the world waning. After his failed summoning the day of Thancred’s death, he’d known it would take months if not years to try again. The First simply did not have that sort of time.

So he changed his focus. He did not have enough time to summon the Warrior of Light to the First he lived in. But he had time to repair the mechanisms the Ironworks had left in his basement using the plans they had given him and the knowledge he’d gained working alongside them in that doomed world. He did not need to use the components they’d gathered from Omega. He didn’t need to travel the Rift. He just needed to use Alexander. To travel  _ back _ , not across. 

His problem was that he didn’t have enough time. So he’d just gain some more.

The day before he set his plan in motion, he invited Lyna for tea on the watchtower by the edge of the Crystarium. Someone brought up a table and two chairs for them. He brought the drinks and a few handmade snacks. 

Lyna was not in her captain’s uniform for once. The Exarch was in his traditional robes.

“Please. Is there anything I can help with? Anything at all?” Lyna asked, eyes glistening with unshed tears as her hands gripped her teacup so tightly the Exarch feared it might shatter.

Though feared was maybe too a strong word. He didn’t feel much of anything at the moment. A little apprehensive. A lot of empty. This would be his last meal with Lyna. His last time ever seeing her. Even if he still met  _ a  _ Lyna in the new timeline he went to, she would never grow into the same woman before him. A woman he would be leaving behind, either to exist in a timeline without him and the grand tower whose shadow she’d grown up in, or to cease to exist once he’d changed the timeline enough it erased the future that could no longer persist. 

Sometimes he dreamt about what might have happened to his home on the Source, struggling to survive after the Eighth Umbral Calamity had torn everything to pieces. He had clearly not stopped the Eighth Umbral Calamity in this time, so maybe things were the same enough that that world could still exist in a future beyond that which existed in his timeline. But if he succeeded in stopping the Calamity, would they be going about their daily business until there was a spark and they all disappeared? Or would it not matter, and did they exist in an alternate reality that would never disappear but just continued on without him?

What had they really done by sending him back in time? Was he dooming them all? Was he granting them salvation? Was he just disappearing with no greater influence?

He didn’t know. He just felt guilty, as he felt having his final tea with Lyna.

“You are helping,” the Exarch finally responded, voice even. “Just by being here. By sitting with me and keeping me here.”

“For how long?” Lyna pressed, huffing. “Please, my lord. My-" her voice cracked. She exhaled, long and deep. "Grandfather, I beg of you. Whatever you’re planning, if it will hurt you, I ask that you-”

“It will not hurt me,” the Exarch interrupted, eyes narrowed. “At least, not considerably. It would be a lie to say I will come out unscathed, as I am certain the Tower will not allow me to take such a trip without paying a toll.” He swallowed hard, gazing out at Lakeland. Looking around the city beneath him. He wondered what it would look like on his next try. Would the people build it the same? Or would his slightly different demeanor, undeniably altered after a hundred years of trial and failure, change the way it grew? “We are out of time, Lyna. The Warrior of Darkness is not coming. Not to us. I couldn’t bring them here in time.”

“Then what do you plan to do? Where do you plan to go?”

“I will go back to the day I came here and try again. I’m sure I can get the Warrior eventually. I just need more time, which we do not have with the growth of the Light. We have a moon at best, a week at worst. I don’t have the energy to attempt another summoning  _ and _ go back if it fails. Nor have I advanced any further in my research into summonings to be at all confident it will succeed this time.”

“But you’re confident you can travel back in time? That’s somehow easier?”

The Exarch smiled, a bitter thing that betrayed the pain in his heart. “That’s how I got here in the first place.”

Lyna, who had not taken her eyes off the Exarch for the entire meal, finally looked away. She was gazing out toward where Rak’tika used to be, before a Lightwarden had burst out and enveloped the area in burning Light.

Her voice was soft when she next spoke. “Then be kind to her, will you? You were and are more precious to her than you could ever know,” she whispered.

The Exarch furrowed his brow. “To who?”

Lyna looked down at her tea. Then to the pastries the Exarch had made. Then to the crystal at his elbow, finally at his face. She reached forward and pushed the hood off his head, revealing a face that none in the First save she, Urianger, and Chessamile knew. “To the little Viis who you saved so many decades ago. To a woman who will miss you dearly, but accepts that you have a duty to fulfill.” She swallowed hard, the tears finally falling. “I will miss you, Grandfather. Please, be safe. Please.”

The Exarch bit his lip, the sharp points of his canines splitting his lip. “Oh Lyna…”

He rose from his seat, walking around the table to hug her.

Lyna rose before he could reach her, walking out to the edge of the watchtower, away from his arms.

“You should go,” she said to him, voice wavering slightly but full of strength. “As you said, we don’t have much time. You are our only hope, and I would not hold you back.”

“...”

The Exarch dropped the arms he’d reached out to her with. Then he bowed, hoping the sound of fabric would inform Lyna of his motion even as her gaze was out and away.

“Thank you. I will not let you down.”

And so he walked away, down to the Crystal Tower, up to the Ocular, and into a trance that would link him to the Tower and Tycoon below in a way that would sweep him back to the day he’d arrived on the First, praying that this time his efforts would be enough.


	2. Chapter 2

Not much changed, the second time he went back. The time after his first failure. He woke in the Crystal Tower some few days after arriving, crystal down to his right wrist and now curving half an ilm up the left side of his chin. He did exactly what he did the first time he’d gone back, at least to his best abilities given he remembered how things generally went but couldn’t recall every little detail of a century-long span. 

The time he’d spent researching how to call forth the Warrior of Light in the first timeline (he considered the one he came from post-eight Calamity the zeroth timeline. The original. The first timeline was the one he went back in time to) was spent doing the same in the second timeline. The avenues he took were just different. Same time, different paths.

He rescued Lyna like he had in the first timeline. Tried to keep the same distance, even if her words and his heart pulled him to want to do more, to have her call him grandfather all the time and to let her stay with him in the Crystal Tower instead of sending her away to a special room in the Pendants at bedtime and returning to a cold, lonely room of his own.

Something must have changed a little though. This Lyna was less clingy when she was young. More distant when she was older. Still captain, but more eager to take up duties farther from the tower and less insistent upon dining with him at least thrice a week.

Maybe he seemed suspicious. Maybe he was colder. Maybe lingering regrets made him treat her differently. He wasn’t sure, but there was nothing he could do about it. 

Perhaps it was for the best they didn’t grow too close. It would hurt them both less when he died after his plan finally succeeded. She would mourn him for a day or two, think back to him with slight sadness for a period longer, and then move on with her life. She was a strong woman. She could and would persevere when he was gone. The Crystarium would need a leader, and while he had strived to build a council or at least group of strong and knowledgeable individuals who would keep it up and running once his life had burst in the nothingness of the Rift, he knew they would need a central figure to keep them in check for a time, and none would be better than Lyna. She had his full confidence.

Unfortunately, she did not seem fully confident in him after he summoned Thancred yet again, though this time after only seventy years of preparation. 

Apparently telling Lyna that he was summoning souls from another world in an attempt to fix their problems was not a good idea. In both the first and second timeline she’d been more headstrong when she was younger, and she’d seemed hurt when he explained how his new visitor had arrived and what said visitor was a sign of. 

“Why don’t you trust us to take care of our own problems? Why don’t you trust me to save our homeland? Do you think me that weak?” Lyna asked him after Thancred had decided he wanted to find the Minfilia of that time who had been spotted fighting Sin Eaters in Eulmore. That Minfilia was in her late teens or early twenties from what the Exarch knew. It would be a very different experience than the one Thancred had originally had.

As was Lyna’s reaction to knowing where Thancred came from and why he was there very different than the reaction she’d had when the Exarch had just told her Thancred was a friend from his homeland and asked her to trust him.

He hadn’t told the second Lyna about time travel. She did not know that he came from a future, or that he’d known another version of her. He told her only that he was from another world when she turned fifty, a moon before Thancred arrived, and that was it.

So when she asked him why he couldn’t trust them, he couldn’t answer the truthful answer of ‘because I was not aiming for him, I was aiming for someone else, and I am from a timeline in which we did not get them but you and your people did all you could and it still was not enough.’

Instead he took a minute of silence to think up a different response. Something honest, even if it wasn’t the full picture, because she deserved honesty from him. She and the first Lyna. Especially because of the first Lyna.

“Because while I believe you are a powerful woman and that the people of Norvrandt are wonderfully strong to have survived and persevered through the decades of crushing Light and Sin Eater attacks, it can’t hurt to have extra help. The population has grown small, and the few who could call themselves heroes fewer. I wish to ease your burden if you would allow me to.”

Lyna stared at him for another minute of silence. Then she sighed, closing her eyes and shaking her head. When she reopened them he could not define her expression. Somewhat sad, somewhat melancholic, somewhat acknowledging, somewhat realizing. What would one call such a complex set of emotions? 

“I suppose. I will not question your judgment here, but I ask that you do not underestimate us simply because you have friends you think to be strong. It has been ages since you have seen your friends. I do not know how old you are given your aging seems to have stopped since long before you met me, but I do know that this friend of yours has never been around in my lifetime, and half a century is a long time for memories to fade and change. Be careful, my lord. Do not let reminiscence cloud your mind.”

The Exarch nodded and Lyna took her leave.

He sighed, letting his head fall back against the large mirror he used to peer into the Source and into the lives of the people beyond the Crystal Tower. He and Lyna had been speaking in the Ocular so no one could listen in. He could sense each and every living being that entered his Tower, so it was the best place to go to ensure no one was spying on him or eavesdropping. He would know if they tried.

So long as they weren’t Ascian, at least. 

He still didn’t know how to deal with that either. He’d read the books the Scions and others who dealt with Ascians had left behind. By talking to the people of the First he’d gathered that the Warriors of Light of the First had killed two right before the Flood, and he hadn’t seen any in either timeline he’d spent there. But they couldn’t be leaving it entirely alone. Maybe they just didn’t think his actions concerning enough. Maybe something about him made them leave him alone, like how the Ascians had never tried to directly interact with the Elder Seedseer or Sultana or Admiral of his Warrior of Light’s time, despite definitely interfering with the Archbishop of Ishgard and likely interfering with the Emperor of Garlemald.

Maybe the First was damaged enough that they thought further work there to be pointless. The Crystal Exarch was doing what many considered hopeless work, after all. It was why the Eulmore of the first timeline had stopped its fight against the Sin Eaters and decided to waste away in pleasure rather than fight for a future they believed nonexistent. That  _ was _ nonexistent, in the end. The Crystarium hadn’t given up, but there were signs of hope cracking even before the Exarch went back in time once more. He wondered how they’d held up in the final days before the end, after he and the tower disappeared.

It most definitely had disappeared alongside him. The tower he lived in at the moment had drawings that the first Lyna had given him, hidden away in the Umbilicus that none but him entered. Not even this Lyna. She’d been able to go in in the first timeline. But this one...

It had other odds and ends of the first timeline in there too. It had tons of material from the original, zeroth timeline. It was a culmination of three timelines and five eras (the Allagan, the Seventh Astral, the Eight Umbral, the first First, and the second First) really, items proving its wrongness hidden away in spots the few allowed into the tower would not see them.

He wondered what had happened to the G’raha Tia that had gone back from the Eighth to the First. Was there only one? Were the timelines neat enough that there would only be one, being him? Or had a G’raha Tia and his Tower arrived in the exact moment the Crystal Exarch had, only to be replaced? 

...the Exarch didn’t want to think about it. The lives he had left behind. The lives he might have snuffed out. It was terribly unpleasant stuff.

So instead he focused once again on perfecting his summoning technique.

This time Urianger came a year and a half after Thancred, accompanied by Y’shtola. Y’shtola stormed out, furious over having been dragged away from her home timeline. Apparently she had just woken up after being severely injured in an attack by Zenos yae Galvus, and she was not at all amused at being taken out of the picture before she could give the Scions or the Resistance any further aid.

The Exarch was left speechless after that. He’d removed her from  _ when _ ? They were still fighting that war?

When he thought about it, Thancred had mentioned being on some sort of infiltration mission in Garlemald. When had the Exarch grabbed him from? He’d never asked, having known when the first Thancred was from and just assuming the second Thancred was from then too, with the man never clarifying.

But of course he wasn’t from the same point in time! Though time flowed differently on the First and the Source, he had pulled Thancred forth twenty-five years early in First time. In his original attempts he’d been so careful to pull the Warrior of Light and thus accidentally other Scions from a time of lull (or, as much of a lull as the Scions ever got, which was truly never, but there were some sacrifices he was willing to make) when they’d be skilled and strong enough to do what he needed without causing their homes to collapse without their aid.

But he’d forgotten. He had somehow forgotten all the work he’d done to go to Ishgard to collect Heavensward to track the Warrior’s journey, all the digging he’d done in the ruins of Rhalgr’s Reach to find a magitek terminal that contained records of their later exploits, all the pain and exhaustion that seeped through his bones when he tried to see if any city states had elaborated on the stories before realizing that being so far from the Tower for so long was slowly but effectively killing him.

He and the Ironworks had worked so hard to chart out the timeline, and he’d forgotten all about it. And likely messed things up in the process.

No, not likely.

Two years down the line, the apocalypse came.

He wasn’t sure how else to describe it. The scene, the chaos, the feeling of dread and sickness and failure.

For a brief moment, there was dark. Not night sky. The First had never had an actual night sky in all the years he’d spent on it, now something around 175 years since he’d first traveled there from the Source. But a wave of darkness and something terrible that tugged at his chest in ways he could not identify.

Then there were Voidsent. Voidsent in a world consumed by Light. Something that should not have been possible.

Nor was it for long, as a mere minute after the darkness appeared it disappeared, returning the ugly blinding yellow to the sky that dissolved the Voidsent before any could reach the ground and attack the citizens of the Crystarium, panicking as the Exarch frantically tried to put up a barrier that could protect his people.

That wasn’t the end, though. Odd lightning, something twisted from what it had been on the Source by the blinding Light above, struck the land around them. The Sin Eaters that occasionally graced Lakeland began to move in odd packs, some writhing, many screeching. Urianger, who’d been staying in the Crystarium rather than Il Mheg, said he felt odd.

So did the Exarch. A sick kind of odd.

The people of the Crystarium suddenly grew ill, one after the other. Collapsing, or coughing, or becoming confused and wandering around aimlessly with glassy eyes.

The Crystal Exarch hadn’t the faintest idea of what to do. Hadn’t the faintest idea of what might have caused the scenes before him.

And then it struck him.

He sprinted to the Ocular, training the mirror on where he’d last seen the Warrior of Light.

They were not there. So he tried other places they might be. Gridania, Limsa Lominsa, Ul’dah, Gyr Abania, Doma-

Doma.

The Warrior of Light was in Doma.

No. The Warrior of Light’s  _ corpse _ was in Doma. Zenos yae Galvus stood over them, the corpse of a Raen Au Ra by the Warrior’s side.

“No…!” the Exarch gasped, falling to his knees. “No!” 

He slammed his palms into the crystal in front of him. The impact of his flesh hand made a dull thump. The crystal of his right hand made an uncomfortable ‘shing’ sort of noise, claimed by the Tower after summoning Thancred a second time. Urianger and Y’shtola’s summoning had left a jagged line up his left cheek.

But not his forehead. His forehead, though now covered by whitening hair rather than deep red, was still flesh. So it too made a dull thump when he lost the energy to hold his head up, slumping forward and leaning onto the mirror.

Urianger approached from behind him.

“They….they…”

Urianger did not finish.

“I’m sorry,” the Exarch whispered, feeling drained. “I am so, so sorry.”

'It’s all my fault,' he did not say aloud. But it was. He’d taken the Scions too early. Whatever that had done had caused the Warrior of Light to die where they had not in either the original timeline or the first timeline. 

He’d killed them.

He didn’t just let them die. His actions had led to their death. They could not be separated. He had killed them.

The Exarch grit his teeth. “Get out.”

Urianger sounded confused when he responded. “Excuse me?”

“Out. Now. I don’t have time...I need to fix things before they grow worse.”

“You mean to travel back once more? To attempt to fix the timeline from an earlier point?”

Oh, the Exarch had told Urianger about the time travel too, hadn’t he.

“I do. And you cannot be present for this. There’s no telling what will happen if two of the same soul exist in the same timeline on the same shard, and I have a feeling that whatever future summonings I do will proceed in the same order. I don’t want to kill you too. I can’t bear to do it.”

“...I see. May the Twelve watch over thee, G’raha Tia. I hope to meet with thee again, in a better life.”

The soft sound of Urianger’s slippered steps echoed through the Ocular as he left. It took another ten minutes before he was out of the Tower.

When he was, the Exarch rose. He stared at the corpse on the floor of the scene shown by the mirror. A group of Domans and Lyse had found it. They were sobbing.

Tears fell from the Exarch’s eyes to be sure. The scene the mirror showed was terribly blurry because of it. But not a sob escaped his body, not a cry.

Instead, he lifted his staff and called out to the Tower and the Tycoon below. And he went back. He would have to do better. He would.


	3. Chapter 3

His third trip back in time sent the crystal all the way across his chest, growing until it covered the tattoo that had once been visible on his left shoulder. The crystal had grown down to his right waist as well, though only on the very side. It made it a bit awkward to bend, but it was something he’d get used to he supposed. Just like he got used to the crystal on his arm and what that did to his elbow. There was a separate patch on his right thigh too, just above the knee. Nothing that interfered with walking. Yet. But he assumed the next summoning would probably change that, and that his staff would become something of a walking stick. Moreso that it already was in times he ventured far enough from the Tower that he felt his strength waning.

Technology at the Crystarium advanced slightly faster in the third timeline. He’d had some architectural blueprints and medicinal recipes from the second Crystarium stocked away in a room he’d forgotten about until a member of the little town forming at its base a decade after his arrival wandered in and found them.

They’d thought the documents his ideas. His machinations. They weren’t, but the Exarch couldn’t very well explain the time travel thing, so he smiled weakly and laughed it off, saying he’d made them some time ago but hadn’t thought them very useful and thus stored them away.

Of course the documents were, and the Crystarium flourished. Its population grew faster than it had in the first two timelines. So much so that Sullen was largely abandoned about fifty years after the Exarch’s arrival, fishers choosing to take advantage of the newly built skyslippers to ride over to good fishing spots before returning to sell their own goods. The middlemen who’d delivered goods from Sullen to the Crystarium and back were removed from the picture. The Exarch wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

But he did know how he felt about Lyna. He was not going to allow her to grow distant again. His heart couldn’t take it. 

So when he adopted her, the same as always, he prepared a room for her in the Crystarium. Somewhere she could call her own, rather than some nice but far away room in the Pendants. He asked her if she would like to call him Grandfather two or three years after he’d adopted her, and she agreed. She liked to play with his ears, commenting on how different they were from her own. When he was out of his robes and had his tail in the open, she’d pout about how she was sad she didn’t have one too. There were hares that had similar ears to hers with puffy little tails, and even if she couldn’t have a long tail like the Exarch she wished she could’ve had a short fluffy one like them so she could at least match somewhat. 

That gave the Exarch a good laugh. And hurt him far, far more than she would ever intend when she cheerfully followed up her comments by saying she was happy their hair colors at least partially matched, since his was turning white like hers.

Ah, hair. Because the Tower couldn’t just stop at crystalizing his flesh. It had to drain the color of the natural body he had left too, even if it did not let him visibly age or alter his face in any way other than slowly growing the crystal on his cheek. 

Lyna grew, and she was closer to him than the first one had been. Almost worryingly so. 

She came to him sobbing one day not long after after joining the Crystarium Guard, telling him she wasn’t sure if she could do it. That she wasn’t sure if she was cut out for the job.

“Lyna, you’re hardworking and strong and one of the best dancers we have. You work wonderfully in a team and I can tell your squadmates respect you. What in the world has you feeling out of place? What could possibly seem beyond you?” the Exarch asked, concerned and confused. He grabbed her hands to try to comfort her.

Lyna, thirty-five at the time, blinked tears out of her eyes, trying to even her breathing. “I will have to leave you behind,” she told him, knuckles white as she clenched her fists beneath the Exarch’s grip. “What if someone attacks you while I am away? What if I cannot protect you and you...”

She shook her head, pulling away slightly. The Exarch moved forward to take her hands once more but it only caused her to back away further.

“I know it is silly to be so upset. You’ve protected yourself before and I know you’re a far stronger fighter than any of us. I mean, the reason I’ve come to know you so well in the first place is that you rescued me from Sin Eaters even after they’d killed my family and some of the old guard. I know you are strong, and yet the worry remains,” she explained.

The Exarch sighed. So instead of making it so she didn’t want to be with him and wished to escape the Crystarium as had happened with the second Lyna, the third was so attached to him she didn’t want to leave. Why was raising children so hard? How had he done the best the first time around? All three Lynas were strong and confident and wise in most cases, but the little changes made such a difference sometimes.

The Exarch straightened, holding himself as tall as he could. Which wasn’t very tall compared to his ‘granddaughter.’

“If you want to protect me the best you can, then you must continue on this path and rise within the guard,” he told her, stance strong and staff firmly on the ground. Trying to project some sense of authority and confidence. “Eliminating threats before they reach the Crystarium definitely helps me, as that means I am under less stress and strain to manage the barriers. Not to mention that the more combat experience you gain, and the more the variety of that combat, the better able you will be able to protect me from a variety of threats.

“I am sure that as you rise through the rankings you will be given more control over the location of your station. You can request to be transferred to the gate unit after this next mission is done if you truly wish. That way you will never be too far.” That was the logic the first Lyna had followed, though she hadn’t explained her reasoning until she’d been at that post for a decade. 

“But I urge you to do as you’ve been assigned. Remember how you teared up when you first received a housing assignment at the barracks and realized you’d no longer be living in the Crystal Tower, only a door away from me?” Lyna blushed, opening her mouth to offer some sort of retort. The Exarch waved her off. “You survived that and have blossomed into the most amazing warrior and a wonderful woman since then. I have full confidence you can and will succeed with the Crystarium Guard, whether you are waiting at the foot of the Tower or somewhere at the other edge of Lakeland. I believe in you, Lyna. If you can’t do it, no one can.”

“Grandfather,” Lyna responded, exhaling slowly and allowing her ears to droop somewhat. She gave him the Crystarium salute. “You’re right. I must strengthen myself, for your sake and for the sake of our people. Thank you, my lord.” Then she dropped the salute, stepping forward to envelop him in a hug. “I will see you soon. Would you like to have dinner together the night I get back?”

“Is there any other possible course of action?” the Exarch responded, winking in the open air that surrounded him with his hood down for once.

“Ha! You know there are many, but I appreciate your tone. Until then.”

Lyna withdrew and saluted once more, heading out of the Crystal Tower to dress for her mission and join the rest of her squadmates. The Exarch watched her through the mirror as she left. And a few times during the mission. And as she came back, so he could plan the meal perfectly as to be hot and freshly ready the moment she arrived.

That was probably one of the highlights of the timeline.

Not the highest moment. But up there, most certainly.

No, the highlight of that timeline was the exhilaration he felt when he saw the Warrior of Light speaking to Lyna in front of the last checkpoint before the Crystal Tower. A high he had never felt before, not even when the first wave of excitement and amazement and jubilation washed over him when he’d arrived on the First in the first timeline, not even when euphoria filled his breast when he’d finally managed to talk to the Warrior of Light one-on-one just a week before, telling them of the beacon that could help send them over.

It was a wonderful moment. It was far better than the Exarch had ever dreamed, a moment of bliss that he doubted much could surpass.

And though that bliss faded into a general but more reasonable happiness, the sense of happiness itself did not go away in the Warrior’s entire time there. 

At Holminster, the Exarch could not help but bow before his Warrior of Light, the new Warrior of Darkness. They had come. His plan was working. Roughly two hundred seventy five years after he had first set out to accomplish his seemingly impossible and frankly insane plan, and everything was falling into place. 

The Warrior, accompanied by either himself or the other Scions he had called forth (which grew to include Alphinaud and Alisaie that time, neither of which were particularly happy to be there but the latter of which was furious in a way that rivaled or even trumped Y’shtola’s outburst), slayed the Lightwardens one after the other. Put the Cardinal Virtues to rest. Helped the people of Norvrandt like a true savior.

And died to a venomous spider in Rak’tika while Master Chai and the others were working on building a Talos able to reach Mt. Gulg.

A spider.

A Twelve-damned  _ spider _ .

Not even one sent out by an enemy. Just one wandering the woods, minding its own business until the Warrior of Darkness came along and scared it into attacking.

Rak’tika burned after the Warrior of Light’s death. 

Not because another apocalypse had come. No, not that. It burned because of the Crystal Exarch, who had dug out the mound of a unique, synthetic auracite Urianger had invented in that first timeline to siphon energy from Sin Eaters that the Exarch had instead used to store his power over the decades and centuries, boundless energy from the unending Light above that was absorbed by the Crystal Tower and into the Crystal Exarch’s body until he passed it into auracite to use in case of emergency. In case of the worst-case scenario.

It was a waste, really. The timeline would soon no longer exist, and so the suffering would not be long. 

But the Exarch felt nothing but pure rage when, looking through his mirror, he saw the Warrior of Light collapse because a mixture of already-deadly venom and a terrible allergic reaction that sent them into a state that neither his strongest raise spells nor the phoenix pinion he kept with him could fix.

Their body dissolved shortly thereafter. 

And when it did the Exarch returned to the tower, grabbed his auracite, and teleported back to the woods where he set to murdering each and every spider he could find. Spell after spell after spell until something caught fire and the whole wood began to burn. The Exarch thought he could hear screaming in the distance. The people of Slitherbough were close enough to the edge and to a body of water they’d probably been fine, but the Viis…

He apologized to Lyna. That was where her family lived. Her mother and father had run away together after deciding they were in love in a way more than just what breeding would allow and that they wanted a family together. Lyna was born in Fanow, even if her mother had fled mere days after she was introduced to the world. Her grandmothers and aunts and cousins lived there.

But they were dying. Dead. Because the Exarch had broken. Because the Warrior of Light had died. To a  _ spider _ . Not a Sin Eater. Not a Lightwarden. Not an Ascian, who had finally introduced himself after the Exarch had finally grown to believe that perhaps the First simply did not have any.

To a spider.

He apologized again when he teleported back to the Crystarium, finding Lyna in the Ocular, wide eyed first at his sudden appearance and then at the blood and bile on his clothes and the smell of burnt wood and fabric that clung to his body.

He apologized once again as he urged the magic of the Crystal Tower to wrap around her body and send her to the gate of the Crystarium, out to Tesselation where she would not be able to reach the Tower again in time to prevent his spell.

And then he lifted his staff. Allowed the power of the Crystal Tower to wash over him. It felt less and less like a foreign entity meant for him and more and more like a simple extension of himself. Like he was drawing from his own aether, but just slightly to the left and up, rather than within himself.

And the spell was cast, and he was once more on the First in a time only shortly after the Flood. He collapsed, sobbing. 

Then darkness took him, the thrumming energy of the Crystal Tower hugging him and feeling almost as though it was trying to comfort him as he began to realize how hopeless all of his attempts might have been.


	4. Chapter 4

The fourth timeline… the fourth timeline was not special. Though the Exarch provided the materials that had been accidentally discovered in the third timeline fairly early on, the Crystarium did not grow as it had in that third timeline. Yes, technology advanced. But there was something off. Fewer people were attracted to the growing city. Those that did come tended to be slightly more closed off than they had in the previous timeline. Which was definitely already more than they had been in the second or first. He hadn’t thought much about it before, but the people themselves were less lively as repetitions went on.

Was it because he was too? Because after centuries of failure he felt his spirit fading, his belief that he could and would succeed drifting away with the years, going somewhere beyond him that he was no longer sure he could reach?

Lyna was...Lyna was good. She was like the first timeline’s Lyna. He thought. The Lynas were starting to blur. It had been nearly three hundred years since he’d met the first Lyna when he met the fourth. Three hundred seventy five since he’d said goodbye to the first Lyna when the Warrior of Light finally arrived.

There were no spiders to kill them this time. The Exarch had exterminated them all half a century before, armed with auracite charged up by fifty years of boundless light on the First and a passion beyond anything he’d felt since the Warrior had first died to them.

It was...difficult...for the Exarch to get passionate about much of anything anymore. His duty felt more and more like just that; a duty, not a dream. Something he had to do. He  _ had _ to do. It was not fun like it had used to be. It was a means to an end. He would save them. They would be happy. And he…

He would rest.

Miqo’te were not supposed to live beyond a hundred. Though many Miqo’te lived to be somewhere between eighty and a hundred as Hyur did, the Miqo’te of his tribe and others in Ilsabard tended to die somewhere between sixty five and eighty five instead. Conditions were harsh, and that either wore down their lifespans in a manner so deep it passed on to their children or just in a way that, because no one tended to leave, impacted everyone living there because they could not escape the lifestyle and all its dangers.

The Exarch, on the other hand, had lived four times that amount. Four centuries of trying to either unravel Allagan mysteries or use them to solve his problems. Four centuries of dreaming big and never getting what he wanted for more than a fleeting moment.

Save, perhaps, the few months he spent investigating the Crystal Tower in the original timeline, between meeting the Warrior and sealing himself within.

That moment lasted long enough to not be fleeting, even if after so many years a few months felt like practically nothing.

He supposed the few months the Warrior spent on the First in that third timeline might have been long enough to not be considered totally fleeting either. But…

When he was young, those months investigating the Tower had felt like forever, even if only in the moment. When he was old, the months spent with or watching the Warrior aid the first felt much too fast. Fleeting as they existed.

He overheard Lyna talking to the Warrior in the last timeline, thanking him for making the Exarch happy. It was something she rarely saw, she said, and she was glad that the Warrior’s presence could help in such a way even if she did not fully understand why.

The Exarch had felt slightly bad hearing that. He’d done his best to support Lyna, had thought he seemed happy enough in the moments. But apparently he hadn’t been.

And by the fourth timeline he simply didn’t have the energy to keep up the charade. Not that it was a problem of physical energy - so long as he remained within a few dozen malms of the Crystal Tower, he was perfectly fine. He’d found that over time he was able to go farther and farther from it without feeling any immediate adverse effects as time went on. He could venture further into Lakeland, had used the energy to carry out his plan in Rak’tika, and so on. Which was the opposite of how he’d expected things to go, but he wasn’t complaining.

Maybe it was because the Tower had a better hold on him as time went on so it was less worried about letting him go. As if the Tower could have thoughts or feelings, which it really shouldn’t. But sometimes the Exarch felt like it did. 

The Crystallization had progressed further. By the time he’d managed to summon the Warrior of Light in the third timeline, a second jagged line of crystal ran up the left side of his face, this one closer to his ear. The first line of crystal reached the bottom of his eye, which had made it uncomfortable to blink for a few years until he got used to it. 

Ha. A few years. Like it was nothing big. Because it really wasn’t, anymore. Thinking about how miserable he was after a measly four centuries made him admire the Unsundered in a way he never would’ve considered before first going back. How had they carried on? How had they not all just lost it, being far, far older than the Exarch could ever know? Maybe they had. Maybe he was losing it too.

He couldn’t remember what summoning had pushed the crystal over his left elbow, but by the time he awoke after reaching the fourth timeline it had made its way down his entire left arm, only a few patches of skin still present here and there. Isolated islands in a land of crystal. He’d long since stopped wondering about how body parts that required blood could function perfectly well while surrounded by crystal that most certainly was not transporting any blood to them.

The patch above his knee had expanded after the first summoning of the Warrior of Light, that much he remembered. Mostly because of how upsetting it had been to find he could hardly walk when he wanted to sprint to greet the Warrior outside of the Crystarium Gates. Maybe if he hadn’t been so hindered by the new change he would’ve met the Warrior before Lyna did.

Not that it was bad Lyna met them first. That Lyna had been lovely. They all had been. But the Exarch still wished he’d been able to greet them first.

By the fourth timeline, that entire leg was encased in crystal. The crystal on his right waist had met it at some point. Or vice versa. It had also grown down his left thigh, moving a few ilms below once the Scions and the Warrior were all present on the First.

He was more crystal than flesh at that point. Only his tails and ears were wholly as they used to be. If you didn’t count the color, at least. It was entirely white by then. At some point his hair had started growing out white rather than just whitening at the tips, and as he kept the same general appearance throughout the timelines he had to cut it to maintain the style, eventually getting rid of the last bits of red that had once been there.

He’d sobbed that day. One of the last pieces of himself, his  _ true, original _ self, gone.

Sometimes when he looked in the mirror and saw the bright red of his eyes he had to hold back bitter laughter, small breakdowns wishing the blue of his crystalline skin was instead the blue of his eye that he had had in the last few moments before his life took a turn for the worse. 

Back when he was just G’raha Tia, a Student of Baldesion passionate about anything and everything Allagan. 

Now he had lost it all but longed to hear his name once more. In the third timeline, he hadn’t told anyone what it was. He hadn’t even shown his face to Urianger, even if Lyna knew it. After the distance that had grown between he and Lyna in that second timeline, probably not directly related to his mentioning his foreign homeland but possibly indirectly related to such mentions, the Exarch had decided to play it safe in the third timeline and tell (lie to) Urianger that he was a native of the First who had the gift of foresight, a modified but powerful version of the Echo that had allowed him to witness the events of the Eighth Umbral Calamity from his place on the First.

Urianger probably knew that he was G’raha Tia. They had interacted a handful of times back in Sharlayan and while doing Archon business, and a few more times over linkpearl when investigating the Crystal Tower. 

But Urianger knew how important secrets were, and the values in keeping quiet even if one had seen through them. So he never pressed the Exarch. The Exarch did not hear his true name that timeline. Not once. It took one hundred seventy two years after the second timeline’s end for him to hear it from Urianger’s mouth once more.

The next time he heard it was when his plan  _ finally  _ came to an end. When he finally reached the point he’d been dreaming of for so long.

The Warrior did not die to a spider. They did not die to an outside force. They helped the people, they killed the Cardinal Virtues, they killed the Lightwardens, and they absorbed the light. They absorbed it time and time again until their body and soul began to crack under the pressure atop Mt. Gulg, unable to contain the boundless light any longer without aid.

But they were not dead. They were hurting, they were dying, but they were alive.

And so the Exarch appeared and began to cast a spell.

It had been a long time since he’d tried to transport himself across the rift. Three hundred seventy five years. Give or take five or so years. The exact dates of the timeline resets varied by a few months, and he could no longer remember the exact amount. Just that one timeline had ended after roughly seventy five, and the other three after roughly a hundred. So going across the rift himself would be difficult, but he was confident that he could do it.

And then the power of his spell blew his hood away, and the Warrior of Light called out his name.

“G’raha Tia!” they cried out, voice full of pain and confusion and...sadness? Not betrayal. But instead something more akin to longing.

The Exarch faltered for only a moment. But then he steeled himself and put the words aside, continuing his chant. 

Until, that was, literal steel entered his body in the form of a bullet.

It must’ve hit something essential. Maybe something in his spine. All he felt was intense pain, and then blackness.

When he woke sometime later, the precise length of time he did not know, the Warrior of Light was gone. In their place in front of him was the Ascian. Emet-Selch.

“Why, aren’t you quite the curious thing,” Emet-Selch practically sang, twirling a gun on his finger by the trigger guard, pacing the room. “An Allagan on the First, so tightly bound to Syrcus Tower that I couldn’t even get the bullet out before your back had crystallized. I do hope that doesn’t poorly impact your health. You’ll have to forgive me for that - I had truly thought I could remove it and heal you back up when I pulled the trigger, but your Tower thought otherwise.”

The Exarch stared at Emet-Selch’s shoes, unresponsive. He had stopped trying to support the weight of his head and no longer felt like doing so.

He had failed. He was so close. And then. And then.

The Ascian huffed. “Though I know you draw power from the Tower and that being so far from it severely limits your ability to do so, you had more than enough energy stored within the crystal of your own body when I shot you that you should be well beyond healthy enough to speak now. So do speak up.”

The Exarch did not. Emet-Selch did not take kindly to it, dropping into a squat and jerking the Exarch’s chin forward so he would look straight at him, lips curled into an ugly sneer.

“You come from the future. Not only the future, but from across the Rift. Even we Unsundered cannot transfer bodies from Shard to Shard like that. Not others’, as you have. So tell me, how did you do it?”

The Exarch still did not respond. Emet-Selch’s sneer morphed into a frown and a glare. 

“Fine then. You need not explain how you crossed the Rift, because while I find it exceedingly interesting, I don’t require such a power. If I succeed there will be no Rift at all. So it would be a useless skill, even if it is quite intriguing.”

The frown turned into a smile. Emet-Selch’s grip on the Exarch’s chin tightened.

“Instead, tell me how you went back in time. I know you’ve done it more than once. I explored the Tower while you were sleeping and found the most  _ interesting _ things. Would you like me to tell you what I found?”

The Exarch’s eyes widened, and Emet-Selch’s smile with it.

“See,” he cheered, letting go of the Exarch’s chin and rising, spreading his arms wide when he was standing once more. “It’s not that hard to react now is it? It won’t be very hard to tell me either. And you might as well, seeing as you have lost.”

Finally the Exarch spoke, voice grave. “Lost? You don’t know that. We aren’t beaten just yet, not while I and the Scions still live.”

Emet-Selch scoffed. “Yes yes, and we all know how much longer that will last with the Warrior of Light turned into a Sin Eater the likes of which the First has never known. I wouldn’t even call them a Lightwarden, those beings paling so far in comparison to the glorious, monstrous creature our dear hero has become.”

The Exarch felt something inside him crack. He wondered if it actually had. Being mostly made of crystal by that point, it was entirely possible. He’d cracked himself before after a half-malm-long fall he didn’t want to think about.

“You lie,” he choked out, tears forming in his eyes. The ones from his left eye fell as crystal, the ones from his right still liquid as they were supposed to be. “They would  _ never _ -”

“Wouldn’t they?” Emet-Selch shot back, cocking his head to the side. “You made them that way, you know. It was you who urged them on, you who gave them the resources, you who watched as they transformed bit by bit into the very beast you have spent who knows how many centuries slaughtering.”

“You know naught of that which you speak,” the Exarch breathed, his chest constricting. It was hard to get air in. He had failed again. Again. Three hundred seventy five years. Four attempts. Hardly any body left to give to the Tower as an offering for its power.

Emet-Selch’s voice was soft when he next spoke. Something akin to empathy, except the Exarch didn’t think Emet-Selch actually felt bad for him. Maybe understanding would be a better word. A shared experience that had felt bad for Emet-Selch, but that the Ascian treated as unfortunate but unimportant in the long run for the Exarch.

“It hurts, doesn’t it? Seeing your plans crumble in front of you? Watching your loved ones torn away from you time and time again. That Vii, the Scions, the Warrior of Light or Darkness or whatever you want to call them. So much time and effort, and what did it achieve? Loneliness and heartache the likes of which no true mortal could ever understand…”

An explosion sounded outside. Emet-Selch turned in the direction it had come from, narrowing his eyes.

“Hm. It seems our friend has arrived.” He turned back to the Exarch, a lazy grin on his face. “It would be terribly impolite not to greet them, so we must part for a short time. But don’t worry, I’ll be back before you know it. For someone as long-lived as you in the standard of mortals, it will be like no time at all. Ta-ta!”

Then he turned around, slowly waving his hand around in his characteristic style before teleporting away.

The Exarch was left alone in the room, listening to faint sounds of destruction in the distance.

He began to laugh.

Of course things couldn’t work out. Of course his plans had failed, of course in the very moment he’d finally achieved his dreams it all had to come crashing down around him. He couldn’t help anyone. He couldn’t save anyone. He couldn’t-

“Hello?” a new voice said, causing the Exarch to jump. 

A gigantic hooded figure stood in the now-open doorway. Though they wore a mask, the Exarch had a feeling there were no features on the face beneath it anyway.

The Exarch blinked, looking around for signs of Emet-Selch’s return.

“He’s not here,” the figure said, walking into the room and kneeling in front of the Exarch. They released the few bindings that had been placed on him. “Though for how much longer I cannot say. We have at least a few minutes though, so I wanted to give you this.”

The figure handed the Exarch a piece of auracite. One of the energy charged pieces of synthetic auracite he’d kept in the Tower.

“Emet-Selch brought that here a day or two after he brought you back. It’s connected to your Tower-Home, right? And you? Can you use it to escape?”

The Exarch blinked again, at a loss for words. It took him nearly a minute to find them.

“Yes, I should be able to. But...but who are you?”

The figure inclined its head, and though it had no visible mouth the Exarch had the distinct feeling it was smiling. “Oh no one of particular importance. A shade summoned up by Emet-Selch in his loneliness that he accidentally gave too much free will. Someone who does not wish to see any more suffer because of his friend’s pain.”

The Exarch bit his lip, turning the auracite over a few times. “Thank you. So, so much.”

“You are very welcome. Now get going, little one, before Emet-Selch returns!”

The Exarch nodded, rising to his feet and holding the auracite out before him to send himself back to the Tower. But he stopped before the spell could be cast.

“What is your name?” he asked the figure. “I would know the name of my savior, even if this is the only time we meet.”

The feeling of a smile again. “Hythlodaeus,” they said. “And yours?”

“The Crystal-” he paused. Thought about it for a moment. “G’raha Tia.”

Hythlodaeus laughed. “Well then, G’raha Tia, it was an honor to meet you. May whatever gods you believe in guide you safely on your way.”

“Thank you,” the Exarch responded.

He channeled his power into the auracite. A few moments later, he was within the Ocular.

This time he did not try to travel back to the day he first arrived on the First. He’d failed too many times. There was no victory that way, not anymore. Instead, he did something irreversible. Something he had considered after his second failure, but locked away after he realized the price was too high. The payment not something he could afford in the long run.

But he was out of time. He was out of payment. He had no body left to give to the tower aside from-

Well. Apparently it had taken the last few patches on his left arm when it had transported him home. Home to the Ocular. Home to the Tower itself.

All he had left was his tail and the bits of his face and head that had not been taken by the crystal already.

But the Tower seemed to be upset at his plans. It could sense what he wanted it and the powerful being within its basement to do, and it knew it had to collect a toll to let his new dream come true, but desperately did not want to do so.

He had no other options though. So the Exarch held out his hand, using his own body as a conduit for the power of the Tower and the Light and the Auracite and Tycoon-

And found himself in a new place. In a new time. 

It hurt. Immensely. Moreso than any of the previous prices or summonings or transports had hurt. His body was crackling as some hidden internal parts that must not have been crystal before began to turn, as the crystal started to envelop his clothing.

The Exarch stumbled into the Umbilicus, digging out a voice recorder from among the piles of logs from the Ironworks, books that had survived the Eighth calamity, scrolls and tomes he’d claimed from the First over four timelines, drawings of four Lynas that he all loved so dearly and strongly.

And he began to speak into the recorder, shaking hands holding it out in front of him, voice breaking from time to time as the pain of the transformation threatened to overcome him.

He spoke and spoke and spoke and the hours probably turned into days of agony and words and a voice so hoarse he could hardly get words out anymore. He spoke until all he needed to say was said. Not all he wanted to say. Wicked white, or Twelve knew he had so much more he wanted to say. How many emotions and thoughts were swirling in his head that he was desperate for others to know.

But he was out of time. The crystal was crawling up the bottom of his nose. His tail had turned. Only the spot directly beneath his eyes and the forehead above remained flesh. Remained that of a man.

Besides, the Tower had alerted him to the presence of a group of people who were trying to break its barriers. A group including someone with faint royal blood.

The Exarch stumbled out of the Umbilicus into the Ocular down toward a central room that contained a teleportation pad that could transport him to the base of the Tower. Normally he could teleport himself without one, but he dared not feed the Tower any more power. Not until he had passed his final message along.

There was a group of wide eyed people standing in front of the doors to the Tower when the Exarch opened them. A group that hadn’t been expecting him. After all, even ignoring who he was (if that was even recognizable with so much of himself lost to the crystal and the color leeched from his hair), he was a man of crystal. Until he’d seen Xande, he hadn’t thought such a thing possible. Even when he had seen Xande he’d thought the man so corrupted he hardly counted as a man anymore.

His vision was blurry. The pain was so intense the Exarch could focus on naught but the two in front of him.

The Warrior of Light. And…

Himself. G’raha Tia. A man who still went by such a name, rather than a title.

“Please,” the Exarch croaked, shoving the recorder into the Warrior’s hands. “I know this will seem insane and impossible, but you must believe me. Or at the very least give this a listen before you completely discard it and everything I will now tell you.

“The Eighth Umbral Calamity approaches. It is caused by the spread of a poison known as Black Rose on the Source, combined with the destruction caused by the Flood of Light on the Shard known as the First. It is a result of Ascian influence, and if you do not stop them this world will crumble far more than it has in any Calamity before, and you and nearly all of those you love will die in the immediate occurrence and the years following.

“I have left you a recording of the most essential knowledge I have. You are free to explore the Tower to your heart’s content and to examine the items within to support my story or give you further explanation or evidence of whatever I did not have time to record before you arrived and my story reached its end. It should open for you, both because I have asked it to open for you specifically, and because you have the last member of Allagan Royalty with you.”

The Exarch’s voice cracked. His body cracked too. He couldn’t move his legs anymore. His arms barely obeyed his commands when he dropped his hands after the Warrior’s fingers closed around the recorder. His head, still under his control, turned slightly to focus on the man at the Warrior’s side.

“And to you. Me. G’raha Tia. You mustn’t give yourself to the Tower. It will give you power beyond anything you’ve ever imagined if you ask it to, and if you pay the right price.

“But the price is not worth it. The price has won me nothing. Nothing but failure. Explore the Tower, learn about the Allagans to your heart’s content, but try to find another way. I believe you can succeed where I cannot. Hold your friends close and work hard, and I am sure you two can find a way to avert the Calamity in a way I never could.”

G’raha Tia was shaking. That much the Exarch could tell even through his blackening vision. He could no longer move his neck or head. Not his eyes, not even to blink. The Tower at least had the kindness to leave him his mouth to speak his final words before it fully claimed him.

“I know you wish for the Tower to be a beacon of hope. And it can be. But the weight of tomorrow is heavier than you could ever imagine, and to build hope one must first build the foundations of success through all the pain and heartbreak that may come your way. You must find a way to avert the Calamity and the tragedies that come with it.”

The Exarch paused. He couldn’t hear anything any longer. His ears were gone to the crystal.

“Oh, and one last thing. Please don’t throw away the drawings in the Umbilicus. The blueprints you can do whatever you wish with, but the ones that look as they were drawn by a child were drawn by a wonderful Viera named Lyna who is very precious to me, and I ask that you preserve them until they fade. They were made with love. And she deserves as much for all I have put her through…”

The crystal took his mouth. And his sight. And then his mind, his last thoughts being a fervent prayer that this G’raha Tia could succeed where he had not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there it is. The end. A bad end to an extent, as the Crystal Exarch we love never achieves his dreams, but...maybe G'raha Tia and the Warrior will. Maybe they will succeed where he did not. I imagine they would, though how I'm not exactly sure. A variant of canon that would probably take a few hundred thousand words to explore knowing how I do things. But I probably won't be writing that, so the idea is what you'll get. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> And there's chapter 1! Chapter 2 is partially written as of now, with chapters 3 and 4 planned out. There miiiiight be 5 chapters depending on how chapter 4 goes, but I might have the last part be a linebreak end section. 
> 
> For clarification just in case this didn't come across, in this timeline the Exarch managed to summon Thancred at the time he did in canon, but it took longer to summon Urianger and no one else was summoned. Thancred died because of being disconnected from his body for too long, made worse by the fact that the people on the Source didn't know what had happened to him or Urianger thanks to the WoL never being dragged over and able to go back to communicate. Hopefully that makes sense! Anyways, thank you so much for reading, and until next time!


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